I did an interview with New York–based finance podcast host Jack Farley yesterday.
He had done his research, and the discussion was good. I will share it here when the video and podcast are released. For now, though, I want to highlight one question he asked me.
Jack mentioned a recent conversation he'd had with Professor Ken Rogoff, the noted and even slightly notorious US economist who once claimed that states would collapse into disarray once their debt-to-GDP ratios exceeded 90%. That claim, we now know, rested on a spreadsheet error and proved nothing of the sort. On this occasion, however, Rogoff had suggested that an increase in US tariffs from 3% to 10% or more would not have any significant effect on the American economy. Jack asked me what I thought.
My answer was straightforward. I said this might well reflect the perspective of a comfortable member of upper-middle-class America, of which an established economics professor is almost inevitably a part. For members of such households, the impact of tariffs on consumer prices is unlikely to make any material difference to their overall well-being. They can afford to shrug it off.
But for American families on very low incomes, and with the meagre levels of state support still available, such as food stamps, the situation is entirely different. Tariffs on basic foodstuffs from Mexico, as well as energy costs, could be devastating when they take full effect. Tariffs are, after all, a consumption tax. And consumption taxes are deeply regressive.
Jack, however, suggested that tariffs appeared to be working because billions were being raised. I was tempted to reply by borrowing a line from Bachman-Turner Overdrive (you have to be old enough to get the joke), and say, “You ain't seen nothing yet.” Actually, I instead suggested companies may be absorbing the costs of tariffs for now, waiting (almost certainly in vain) for some stability to return to markets so they can raise prices in an orderly fashion, but that situation will not last. Claims that tariffs are “working” are, at best, premature. Prices are bound to be impacted soon.
So too is the idea that Americans can afford what Trump is imposing on them. As I told Jack, tariffs will prove to be a tipping point for many households. What was possible will become impossible. Simply putting food on the table could become incredibly difficult, and mothers who cannot feed their children tend to be very angry indeed. If there is one group in society you do not want to provoke, it is them. They will be the ones who, in the end, will stand up to Trump and all he represents.
Absent fathers might not. Present fathers might not. But, in reality, most household budgets are managed by women. Evidence already shows that women are far more hostile to Trump than men, and I believe this divide will only widen.
We are seeing something similar in the UK, where far more men than women are lining up behind Reform. Politics is becoming increasingly gendered. In the US, as in Britain, it is being shaped not in the abstract world of economic models but in the day-to-day struggles of households for whom the task of managing the household budget is not a metaphor, but a reality.
I look for signs of hope in what otherwise feels like a desperate situation. None of this is good. But I remain hopeful. I believe there will be resistance against misogyny, against the social and class divisions, and against the new rifts opening up across societies. And I believe it will be the practical power of women that does most to bring down the tyranny that is now taking shape in the US, and which threatens to spread elsewhere.
I may be wrong. But I can live in hope.
Two musical codas, as Paul Krugman might describe them, came to mind as I was writing this. One is Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
The other, inevitably, is Aretha Franklin and the Eurythmics: Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves. I sincerely hope they do.
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‘Glad to see this acknowledged.
It is the women who have been knocking the ball out of the park when it comes to critiquing capitalism for some time – Mattei, Mazzucato, MacLean, Harrington and Kelton.
Why do I think it so important? Maybe because as women, having the capacity to carry new life and bring it into the world’s the current system simply terrifies them and makes no sense. Why would you create life and then lose the ability to help control or sustain it because of greed and short termism?
I agree with you that these women are very good and there are lots of others. The problem, I have, is with the ones who get into power – lots of examples in the UK and Canada, and the EU is run by utter idiots several of whom are women with the worst ideas – von der Leyen, Blondie from Estonia etc etc. This blog and You tube channel does give me hope as I trudge towards 80!
Agree women are far more aware of social and economic discrimination and inequality. For example on this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today programme discussing the Met Police and Charing Cross police station scandal of on institutional racism it was the women commentators illustrated the feeble or non-excistent Met response to the Sarah Everard tragedy and all the other scandals that has beset them for years going back to Stephen Lawrence murder and beyond.
The disconnect between the political class and the poor is just as real in the UK, no matter the party, they govern for big business. They appear to believe that wealthy corporations are the cure all of the nation’s social issues, frankly absurd.
Good thing I had a cup of tea before I read that it’s women who have to fight fascism. What a start to the day. Seriously, I am worried about the things that divide men and women, particularly the younger generations. This is no time for division.
There are two video ‘shorts’ on YouTube by Gary Stevenson, ‘My message to Reform voters’ and ‘ You won’t stop Reform by calling their supporters racists’. He says in the first clip, that some of his childhood friends are afraid to go out, so I don’t doubt that he thinks some supporters of Reform are racist. But he’s relentless in asking us to find our common ground, because we cannot afford to be divided. Please watch and can we discuss this here? Sweeping statement: are women broadly, more prepared to be practical than spend time on perfecting argument? Is Gary showing his feminine side? He’s looking a bit more New Testament than old…
I have watched them.
And he is clearly saying some supporters of Reform might be racist, and is saying if some aren’t they should call the others out. How? Where? When? There are no answers. So, what is he seeking to achieve? I am not sure. Isn’t he best to say what is happening and if you aren’t a racist don’t support Reform?
Thank you for watching them. I don’t have the answers to many questions, so I ask them. I don’t see that as a problem in me or others. I’m doing my best. We can’t all be at the same level, or only speak when we have answers.
Hi Richard, very perceptive… as always.
And thanks to PSR for listing some of those clear-thinking female economists. I have Stephanie Kelton’s ‘Deficit Myth on audio book and it is a pleasant listen as well as being informative.
But Pilgrim, my answers to your question “Why create Life?” Biology and evolution have been around a long time and should (God willing) outlast this current iteration of facism and climate change. Besides, love lacks logic! Or so says my lovely wife over the past 48 years.
🙂
As a woman I would say this reflects the anger and disgust women feel
and express, conversational spaces between women, across the generations have become much more political in a way that they weren’t in the past.
I find more women understand the relevance of the economy and public good, like access to health care, education, and all the essentials for life.
Having children is a huge joy, responsibility and investment of life resources, the urge to protect is hard to describe.
The sentiment seems – women are disgusted by the harming and killing of other people’s children in places like Gaza, we fear our children being harmed and one day sent home in a body bag, or turned into economic serfs all because a political elite wanna have it all.
I would say the toxic load of this increasingly toxic world is politicising women.
Much to agree with in my experience.
That Demos is what I am getting at.
I have a book by Germain Greer called ‘Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility’ (1984) that I bought in my formative years. On the cover is a picture by an artist called Sue Coe called ‘Contradiction’, a harrowing picture of a seemingly starving mother figure with a white female baby feeding from one of its breasts – described in the text as:
‘A woman in madness. Living in a body that is not nurtured but a body that is responsible to nurture. The body that creates life but cannot control the fate of that creation’.
As an image it made quite an impact on me and gets straight to the heart of the matter. Over the years we’ve seen lots of war and famine in Africa, now we have war induced famine in Gaza – getting closer to us in the West all of the time. And at home we have austerity and women going with out food to feed their kids.
So, I don’t know, women have a enough to do in the world for sure already. But if you carry children – you are that close to new life – the heightened sense of danger and neglect and uncaring can only make you either despair or angry.
The difference is that it is Western women, well educated, maybe mothers themselves, closer to power, that are now speaking up (Abbey Innes as well deserves a mention) and maybe that is what we need? All those African and Gazan mothers and others that have been ignored – maybe the feminine power of creation is going to save us after all?
One can only hope.
Agreed
I have heard a lot of commentary from the manosphere, and from figures such as Peter Thiel, that women are a problem as they vote left wing. They are “holding back progress.” Progress being a return to female servitude and minority rule by elites. It feels at times that they are all that is holding things together in the face of these psychopaths.
This is a very common claim – it is why Pete Hesgeth – the ‘Secretary of War’ questions whether women should have the vote. You can[t allow that to people who might be empathic after all – as Musk says, empathy threatens democracy
As I recall, Hegseth has also said that he doesn’t mind women voting, but they must acknowledge that it is their duty to vote as their husbands tell them to.
On women forming the resistance (or however we want to put it), I think there is a possible problem, at least from some things I’ve read about the US, that the fight will be left to those least able to do it – the less well off. There seems to be a danger that in the more affluent households, the women might avoid conflict to maintain their lifestyle. But perhaps really only a few percent are in that position.
I just don’t know, but that was a thought that occurred to me…
Paul
It does not surprise me to learn that there is a gender divide in politics today with far fewer women supporting the populist right. How could it not be so when at least in part Trumpism is a backlash on behalf of privileged white males against the loss of their economic and political power occasioned by recent progress on racial and gender equality? There is a reason MAGA hate DEI initiatives so much. It is because they give opportunity to people other than white males. The 1950s golden age of full male employment for which MAGA is nostalgic was also a time when women stayed at home, minded their children and did not challenge men who raped them. The shame belonged to the woman. Trump and his henchmen want to return that age, not just in terms of industrial employment but also in the way that gender relations are ordered. That is why they have curtailed abortion rights and why they cannot tolerate the idea of diversity in gender expression. It was the election of a non white President that galvanised Trump into standing for office and he defeated the person who could have been the first woman President. He was drawing a line and standing for all the white males who feel they have been unfairly marginalised, A lot of women and men instinctively understand this and are lining up accordingly.
Much to agree with
Just a quick comment:
My parents were staunch labour until Blair and now my mother is going to vote for reform!
Just counter acting your point that women are turning away from Reform.
Remember women are taking the brunt of the attacks from undocumented immigrants.
We need to look after our women.